By the early ’70s, the anti-war movementand a radical student culture swept throughBozeman, and Goetz got involved at the groundlevel. “I was sort of a cause guy,” he says, addingthat he helped start Montana’s ACLU at thistime. “I was active in civil liberties issues, and Ifelt the same about the environment.”One of Goetz’s first environmental casesinvolved the nearby region that’s now hometo the Big Sky Resort. In 1972, this was awild, undeveloped region that had caughtthe eye of a team of developers led by NBCnewsman and Montana native Chet Huntley.

Goetz took on the case, pro bono, to halt the
proposed land exchange between Huntley’s
team and the Forest Service, which held the
land in checkerboard ownership from the old
Northern Pacific Railway land grants.

“It was a real baptism by fire, becausethere were seven attorneys on the otherside, and lonely me on my side. We hadquite a fiery hearing.”Goetz ultimately lost, and the resort wentup. “Big Sky and Yellowstone Club andSpanish Peaks development have been verygood to my law firm,” an irony which isn’tlost on him all these years later.

In the early ’70s, Goetz was hired by a groupof Blackfoot Valley ranchers, including LandLindbergh, son of Charles, to draft what wouldbecome the Montana Conservation EasementLaw. “It was a national movement, thoughfairly innovative at the time,” he says. “It allowsthe state to preserve a lot of open space.”He’s also been instrumental in ensuringthat people have access to streams. “Allpeople,” he says. “Not just wealthy peoplewho can buy riverbank property.”Goetz describes many Montanans, himselfincluded, as having an almost mysticalconnection to the land, but there was atime when water access was obstructed bylandowners who, as Goetz puts it, “claimedto own the land under the stream.” Somewent to great lengths to prevent its use.

But in 1985, as a result of Goetz’slegal efforts, the Montana SupremeCourt passed the Stream Access Law,which protects public recreational use ofMontana’s rivers and streams. “I wasn’tpopular at the time with a lot of ranchers,”says Goetz. “But I think almost everybodyhas come to realize that this has been agood thing for Montana.”Many of Goetz’s water rights cases havebeen performed on behalf of the Salishand Kootenai tribes of the Flathead Nation,whom he’s represented since the ’80s,working closely with the tribes’ legal staff.

“[Jim] used the constitution and also thepublic trust doctrine [to show] that naturalresources are for the use and enjoymentof the people of the state,” says TonySchoonen, a fisherman, hunter and activistwho has worked with Goetz on streamaccess and public lands issues. “Withouthim, we wouldn’t have stream access, I’lltell you that.”Goetz’s personal connection to hisstate’s waterways is rooted in a rural 1940schildhood in which summer days wouldoften find him and his brother poling hisangler father down the river in an old armysurplus raft. “My father was regarded bymany as the greatest fisherman in theMadison Valley,” says Goetz. “He was a realtrout slayer.”Goetz also feels the influence of hisfather in his work to equalize schoolfunding—in particular, Helena ElementarySchool District No. 1 v. State of Montana

(1989). “There was a great revenue disparitybetween the mineral-rich counties and theother counties,” he explains. The case wasone of which his father, a former schoolsuperintendent, was quite proud. “My fatherwas a very fiery Democrat in Madison County,a very Republican county. He was prettyaggressive and stood up for what he believed,particularly on school matters—funding andconsolidation. I suppose I got that gene.”Many of Goetz’s peers retired longago, succumbing to stress and often withdamaged relationships or ill health to showfor it. In his youth, Goetz admits he wasn’timmune to overworking, and acknowledgesthe damage it did to his first marriage.

But much of what he’s learned about the
law has come from studying the successes
and failures of lawyers around him—those
who burned out, let their personal politics
interfere or got on the wrong side of a judge.

“I’ve always been courteous and careful
around judges; I may be an iconoclast
otherwise, but whether you like a judge or
not, or think the judge is smart, you just have
to respect their work,” he says.

Goetz points to an autographed photo on
his office wall of former U.S. Supreme Court
Justice William O. Douglas. Hanging nearby
is a casual portrait of the 1977 Supreme Court,
the year Goetz tried his first case in D.C.

“They were both pretty significantconstitutional cases,” he says—the first ofwhich was Baldwin v. Fish & Game Commissionof Montana, involving discrimination againstout-of-state elk hunters. “We raised aninterstate privileges and immunities clause,which was pretty novel. We lost that casebecause the court held that recreationalhunting isn’t a fundamental right.”The second came in 1994, Department ofRevenue of Montana v. Kurth Ranch, in whicha family of ranchers established a marijuanagrow operation, and once they werediscovered and prosecuted, the state tried totax the family’s revenue from the sales. “We

Goetz and Davenport on the Atlantic. “I call it our
existential antithesis,” Goetz says. “We hadn’t a care
in the world—the opposite of a busy law practice.”